Spencer Whitehead, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo
"A brief introduction to characteristic classes"
How can we tell vector bundles apart from each other? In this talk, we will naturally develop an answer to this question by relating the monoid structure of vector bundles on a topological space to the cohomology of the space, obtaining Chern classes for complex vector bundles and Stiefel-Whitney classes for real vector bundles. We will see how these can be used to define other invariants like the Chern character and Todd class, and how these objects appear in contexts like the Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch theorem and its generalizations.I will continue from the last few talks on divisors by highlighting some important features of the toric case. The focus will be on torus invariant divisors and tools for computing the class group and Picard group of toric varieties.
Zoom meeting:
- Meeting ID: 811 2094 8164
- Passcode: 033003